A Week Away

I spend a wonderful week in Courtney, BC with four good friends.  We rented a house on Dove Creek (called Dove Creek Farm) and the place was even better than advertised:

Charles and one of the two horses

The two brothers grazing in one of the nine paddocks

The back view of the house with Mason bee homes under the eaves

Dove Creek from the trail on the property

Another view from the trails

One of the three trails as seen from our back porch

We had a glorious time and even took time out from our mad creations to visit the Farmer's market and downtown Courtney (including the thrift stores!) Fun had by all!

Here is a sneak look at some of our ventures:

Four of us were making a wee Waldorf doll

We made wee elephants (6" tall)

Bobbi's sweet dolly in progress

Joan's Raven doll waiting for hands and a head!

There will be a future post to reveal all of the finished (or almost finished) projects!

Santos Cage Dolls and Such

Our doll club, the Cloth-a-Dollics had a "cage doll" challenge that was due this month, October.  I have already shown my steampunk cage doll and now I wanted to share the three other cage dolls that I made:  the first two are Frida cage dolls (I love everything about Frida, her passion, her love of Mexican culture and folk art, her love of animals and nature, her art, her spirit...)

Frida as a young vibrant Mexican young woman

A needle felted fawn at the bottom of the cage and a parrot.

This represents Frida's life as an artist with love, passion, pain, and  art

The blue cage represents the "Blue House" that she loved and lived in in Mexico City

One of her many self portraits

The final cage doll is the traditional Santos using a pattern by Arley Berryhill.  I used many items that were in my mom's possession such as her rosaries, her drawer top doily, and her spiritual icons, the blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus.  This doll was a joy to make and is going to a great and loving home:

May love rule your heart.  Be the light and not the shadow wherever you go.  Until next time...

Broc and Cara's Picnic Party

I was at the Sidney First Chance craft show this October and I was approached by a local children's book author, Dave Wilson.  Dave loved my wooly critters and commissioned me to make characters from his children's book using my wool sweater technique.

Here is the cover of his book, "Broc and Cara's Picnic Party":

The book is to encourage children to eat healthy and include veggies in their diet by making the vegetables into characters that children can identify.

The first character I made was the beet:

He became my favourite character even though he only has a supporting role in the book.  I had just enough of both the baby blue sweater for his uniform as well as the lovely green shaded sweater for the beet leaves that form his hair.  How cool is he?

Next came cool Cuke, the cucumber with cool attitude:

 I made the shorts using teeshirt material and appliquéd teeshirt flowers to mimic the illustrations in the book.  I love his wee toes.

I found the perfect orange sweater and green sweater to tackle  the main characters, Cara, the Carrot and Broc the broccoli:

I used baby shoes to mimic the runners he wears in the book

When making Cara, I wanted to make her hair using wool as well as yarn.  I have a stash of yarn and I found three shades of green yarn for her hair that is stitched over her kelly green head.

Finally, I wanted to make the busy bee who is crucial in keeping those yummy vegetables coming.

 He is quite the jolly fellow with warm wool wings as well:

Yellow sweaters are hard to come by and I lucked out when I found this cashmere sweater that was riddled with moth holes and so very affordable.

All the characters were so much fun to make and I am happy to report that the author, Dave Wilson, was thrilled with the results.  He wants to use the characters as promotional material as well as giving his son tangible characters to play with this Christmas.

Do go and check out brocandcara's website. He is writing another book in this series about "inner health".

Halloween Kitty Witch

I love Halloween and this year our doll club had a Halloween doll challenge in October so I decided to use a pattern by Pixie's Thimble (Etsy) and adapt it to make a Halloween Kitty witch doll.  What fun I had, I made her a smelly kitten, a coffin, pumpkin friends (polymer clay) and funky spider hat: